纽约恐袭嫌犯为ISIS发动袭击 汽车攻击已成恐怖分子首选

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A U.S. law enforcement official says a terrorist attack in New York City on Tuesday was done in the name of ISIS. It involved a man who apparently drove a rented pickup truck onto a popular bike path. Eight people were killed and more than 12 others are trying to recover from their injuries.

After crashing the truck into a school bus, the suspect then reportedly stepped out, holding imitation firearms, a pellet gun and a paintball gun.

A police officer then shot him in the abdomen. He survived and was taken to the hospital.

This was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York City since the assaults of September 11th, 2001. It happened just blocks away from the World Trade Center, which was a target 16 years ago.

The suspect is a 29-year-old man named Sayfullo Saipov. He's from the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan. Officials say he came to the U.S. legally in 2010 and that he learned about ISIS and radical Islamic tactics afterward. Police say he'd been planning Tuesday's terrorist attack for months and then a note found near the scene was written in Arabic and had the general message that Islamic State, another name for ISIS, would endure forever.

The use of vehicles as weapons has become increasingly common among terrorists. Since 2014, there had been 15 jihadist attacks using cars or trucks in Western countries, killing more than 140 people. That's according to New America, a nonpartisan research group.

SUBTITLE: The one thing: ISIS-inspired attacks.

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: The one thing you need to know about the evolution of terrorism is that even as we see the ISIS organization degraded in countries like Syria and Iraq, we will see individuals who pick up the ISIS message for months or years to come through social media.

ISIS is being degraded, as al Qaeda was before. If you compare this to the highlight of ISIS roughly mid-2015, fewer leaders, less money, obviously, fewer recruits from North America and Western Europe, little ability to confront the armies in Syria, the Russian army as well, and the Iraqi army.

But in the age of social media, ISIS has been able to propagate their ideas. The fact that their message still lives and will live for years on social media means that we will get isolated individuals, sometimes mentally disturbed individuals who decide in their own minds to take action based on an ISIS message, even when the ISIS organization is dying.